Zero-energy houses to enrich life
- Source: Global Times
- [08:28 July 20 2010]
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Erk Schaffarczyk in front of the zero-energy home he is designing. Photo: Guo Yingguang
By Barry Cunningham
Like most homeowners, I don't think much about windows until it's time to wash them.
But spend an afternoon with Erk Schaffarczyk and you develop a new appreciation for the zero-energy possibilities of window glass and wood and stone and all the other natural elements that allow a house to produce as much energy as it uses, through water, the sun and the earth.
At the moment, Schaffarczyk is driving through the crumbling village of Hegezhuang, with its falling down brick homes and broken windows open to a dirt road. The sullen villagers are choked in dust and pollution.
"They accept anything they get from life," he sighs, dreaming of ways he could change their lives with inexpensive, zero-energy designs for living.
The 43-year-old German architect, who spent his early years as a professional ski racer, brought his carpentry skills to China eight years ago, refurbishing schools and building new homes with environmentally-friendly ways to combat what he sees as the biggest enemy of building construction in China - mold.
"I hate high-tech," he says of China's air conditioning and heating systems, which he says turn homes into breeding grounds for microbial slime in the air ducts, while ground water seeps through cheap brick walls and transforms rooms into smelly chambers of mildew. "A zoo for germs," he calls them.
Airtight homes that cost 30 percent less to build and save 80 percent on energy are currently affordable only to the rich, but Beijing's first zero-energy home, which he is building in Quanfa, offers a glimpse at future possibilities for more affordable "green" houses for the poor.
At first glance, the ultra-modern house looks like the box they used to deliver the house next door, an English Tudor manor with a Spanish tile roof in a style replicated throughout the entire villa compound.
The low energy house stands out for its stark, modern design, but Schaffarczyk says the green energy principles he employs inside can create a more livable environment in a house of any architectural style, from one of Beijing's instant McMansions to a peasant dwelling.
Rap your knuckles on the outside cement wall and the house sounds hollow. That's because the architect has wrapped all of the outside walls in 32 centimeters of insulation.
Triple-glazed windows are not mounted on the inside walls, where they would act as heat radiators in summer and refrigeration panels in winter. Instead, they are mounted on the insulated outer shell of the building to maintain a constant temperature.
You search the house in vain for a furnace or air conditioning unit, the kind that normally recycle Beijing's dirty air, so thick with brownish, sulfurous haze that you can literally see what you are breathing. Instead, six solar panels are mounted on the roof, heating a water vat that provides all the heat energy the house will ever need.
